When a New Favorite Author Is an Old Pal
All Giller, No Filler
I was watching the CBC national news several years ago when they did a segment about a Toronto author who’d been shortlisted for the Giller Prize.
It probably wouldn’t have normally made the broadcast given folks have been in contention for Canada’s snootiest literary award every year since 1994, but the hook was that Michelle Winters wasn’t another fêted CanLit muckamuck with their latest triumph to sell but rather a debut novelist in her mid-forties who’d been quietly plugging away at her first book for a decade while working a boring full-time office job. The final manuscript for her wonderful, curiously titled I Am a Truck had also gathered dust in slush piles for years before someone at Invisible Publishing realized they were sitting on gold.
This wasn’t on the level of JK Rowling on welfare working at a cafe before things started looking up for her but still a bit of a Cinderella story — where the prize is a solid hundred grand in cash, a chapter in Canadian history, and a boost to book sales rather than a mere date with Prince Charming — to catch the interest of viewers who read fiction.
It certainly caught mine but then Michelle also happens to be a dear old friend I hadn’t seen in 25 years.
We were both part of a loose circle of friends formed when the artsy weirdos at high schools scattered across the wider Saint John area began finding each other after we all learned to drive back in the late 80s. The sort of kids who wore trench coats, Chuck Taylors and asymmetrical haircuts who acted in plays and played in bands. I knew her for being a gifted painter but can’t say I’m surprised she turned out to be a damn fine writer too. So I was very much looking forward to catching up a bit after I saw she would be co-hosting a trivia night at this year’s Vancouver Writers Festival.
Turns out she had a surprise of her own with the delightful news she’d named a very minor character in her new book Hair for Men after me. Or at least my high school nickname short for Fleming.
I know I don’t have the Great Canadian Novel in me as a writer but it was nice to at least appear IN a great Canadian novel.
To be clear, this isn’t a sign of some deep connection between the two of us; I just happened to have the perfect Dickensian name for a punk rocker. Her young protagonist, Louise, is introduced to the hardcore music scene through a record shop worker named Flemm, and it’s tough to imagine a better choice than a hawk tuah homonym for someone involved in a subculture where spitting at people is encouraged. Or at least it was pre-COVID. She assured me the extra M was only to be on the safe side in case I became litigious. Also Mouse Michelle’s character is albino and I am demonstrably not.
Louise channels her adolescent rage after a humiliating trauma through mosh pits and elbows after he introduces her to the music of Black Flag, whose album Damaged with the cover of frontman Henry Rollins punching a mirror made a particular impact.
I’ve always related to the punk spirit but, unlike my namesake, the thrashier stuff never really did it for me, and I admire Rollins more as an artist than a musician. My privileged, middle-class suburban upbringing probably didn’t leave me with the requisite level of rage to really feel at home in the pit, and at the time I was much more into the music of Frank Black than Black Flag. Or the Dead Milkmen over the Dead Kennedys. The craft of the Clash over the blast of the Pistols.
But the one band constantly playing in the background back then just as it still is today is the Tragically Hip, and their music is put to work as a presence woven throughout Hair for Men, which wraps up during a chaotic viewing party at a New Brunswick marina for the late Gord Downie’s final farewell. It takes a boatload of nerve to centre a second novel around an event watched closely by nearly a third of the country, quite possibly the biggest act of bravery most of us will ever witness, one of those “where were you when?” moments in Canadian history like the big Paul Henderson goal boomers are always going on about.
I’m sure the judges for next year’s Giller Awards watched the dead poet’s swan song too, and it won’t come as a surprise to anyone paying attention if Michelle Winters’ followup is in the running next fall as well.
It’s been a long time coming at eight years since I Am a Truck was published but well worth the wait.